Big mouth, bad math

A tape has surfaced of him explaining to a group of wealthy donors the perceived dynamics of the presidential campaign:

“There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. That that’s an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what. … These are people who pay no income tax. ... [M]y job is not to worry about those people. I’ll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.”

This is the kind of unguarded opinion then-candidate Barack Obama delivered in 2008 to a group of wealthy donors, when he said that many small-town Americans, discouraged with their economic lot in life, “get bitter” and “cling to guns or religion.”

We’ll see what the political fallout will be for Romney’s candor (or confusion). Obama’s remarks obviously didn’t prevent him from getting elected. Romney’s reinforce the meme that he doesn’t understand or sympathize with “ordinary Americans.” Plus, it draws attention away from President Obama’s handling of the economy and the unrest in the Middle East.

The substance of Romney’s argument, though, is thoroughly muddled.

Yes, there are too many Americans dependent on government. Furthermore, the current spending curve on the U.S. entitlement state is unsustainable.

But Romney conflates three different groups under one umbrella: the base 47 percent who will vote for Obama; the nearly half of U.S. households that receive direct government benefits; and the half who don’t pay federal income taxes. They aren’t all the same, and they aren’t all a bunch of moochers who lack personal responsibility.

Obama’s voters include the super wealthy; Romney’s include retired seniors who receive government benefits, as well as working-class families who don’t pay any income tax because of a combination of low income and being eligible for various tax credits — many of which were passed by, and still supported by, Republicans.

According to the conservative Heritage Foundation, the percentage of Americans not paying federal income tax increased from 14.8 percent in 1984 to 49.5 percent in 2009, an era that includes three Republican presidents and some GOP-controlled Congresses. President George W. Bush’s income tax cuts, for example, knocked nearly 8 million families off the tax rolls.

Nicholas Eberstadt of the American Enterprise Institute — hardly a bastion of progressivism — has concluded that entitlement spending over the last half century grew roughly 8 percent more under Republican presidencies than Democratic ones.

The “makers” and “takers” are politically diverse, further influenced by the fact many people who fall in the latter category don’t consider themselves members (much the way many Americans consider themselves middle class even if they fall outside the official income range). That’s because they pay other taxes at the state and local levels (not to mention federal payroll taxes). They believe they are contributing their fair share.

Romney should make the case for a broader, flatter tax system and scaling back entitlements without writing off segments of the electorate.